>For nine years, I've been working with two FileMaker Pro databases that
>keep track of several thousand documents (including titles,
>descriptions, categories, authors, etc.). They've been virtually
>crash-proof and easy to modify. There are nearly 5,000 records (on
>separate pages) in these databases.
You did not state whether these files were related or just two flat
files. If what you have is a relational database then moving it to Excel
is a very bad idea.
Do your FMP databases do much data validation? This is harder to
implement this in Excel and you will be much more likely to have bad data
creeping into your database.
You did not mention how many fields each record has and how the user
relates to the information. Is it important to see the contents of many
fields at a glance or is it okay to string them out into long rows. Are
they prepared to put in the labor to create forms? The basic Excel forms
are a bad joke. If they need forms of any complexity MS will quickly suck
them into Access. So you will be back in a database. Only difference is
that instead of using a good database you will be using a terrible
database.
You did not mention if you have any large text fields. Excel limits
fields to 255 characters, FMP's limit is 65,000.
Do you need to do heavy data analysis on the data in the databases? Excel
does this better with its graphing and pivot tables.
>Would an excel spreadsheet this size be stable or usable? Has anyone
>else had experience with databases of this size?
5,000 is not a big number unless there are many fields per record. I have
made Excel spreadsheets with close to 65,000 rows and almost 200 columns.
Excel was very slow and unstable during data import, but afterwards
settled down and worked just fine.
>And does anyone else have any talking points on why it's a bad idea to
>replace a perfectly reliable, crash-proof database with an Excel
>spreadsheet?
Ultimately the choice depends on how the data is to be used. If is just a
big table with a few columns then Excel will do fine. If there are many
fields per record they may soon find themselves hamstrung. They may find
that information that is easy to view with a database query will take
more work to extract in a spreadsheet.
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Thomas Piwowar - Thomas J. Piwowar & Associates, Inc.
electronic publishing training and consulting
1710 Rhode Island Ave NW - Washington DC - 20036
V:202-223-6813 - Fx:202-223-5059 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.tjpa.com
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